Whence the Austronesian Indirect Possession Construction?

Abstract

Possession in some Austronesian languages shows levels of elaboration far in excess of cross-linguistic norms, while in others it is strikingly unelaborated. The appearance of alienable/inalienable contrasts has been assumed to result from contact with Papuan languages, and the existence of a paradigm of indirect possessive classifiers is cited as one of the pieces of evidence for the Oceanic subgroup, while acknowledging that indirect possession constructions can be found in Malayo-Polynesian languages further west. We argue that the appearance of possessive classifiers in these languages is also the result of contact with Papuan languages west of New Guinea.

Pre‐Austronesian dispersal of banana cultivars West from New Guinea: linguistic relics from Eastern Indonesia

“…They have been variously affiliated with the widespread Trans New Guinea languages that are said to span New Guinea from east to west (Stokhof 1975;Voorhoeve 1975), and to the West Papuan languages of the Bird's Head in north-west New Guinea (Capell 1975;Donohue 2008). There is a mainland base for the term among Papuan languages on the north-western fringe of New Guinea, and then a spread south and west, following the area in which we see a Papuan substrate in the grammar of the languages (Capell 1975;Donohue and Grimes 2008;Donohue and Schapper 2008). The area in which *muku is found in the Austronesian languages of Maluku connects the New Guinea beachhead to the Timor area, where Papuan languages are still spoken today.…”

Nen

“…As in some other Papuan languages (Kalam, see Blevins & Pawley 2010, and Kanum, see Donohue 2009), the nuclei of many syllables in Nen are epenthetic schwas, e.g. [ə.ə] for / / ‘come!’.…”

Reconnecting Genes, Languages and Material Culture in Island Southeast Asia: Aphorisms on Geography and History

“…In one paper already discussed, Xu et al (2012: 4574) assert that, prior to Austronesian dispersal, ISEA consisted of 'Mesolithic hunter-gatherer communities, ' implying that these communities did not have a significant impact on the societies that subsequently emerged. Tere is ample evidence from substratal signals in the Austronesian languages of ISEA that contact with the pre-Austronesian populations of the region was highly significant in shaping the modern languages (e.g., Reid, 1994;Donohue, 2004Donohue, , 2005Donohue, , 2007aDonohue, , 2007bDonohue and Schapper, 2008;Klamer et al, 2008, and many others). Tis suggests that, rather than being overlooked without consequence, the indigenous ISEA populations were socially prominent enough in post-Austronesian ISEA to continue, over a long period, to affect the lexicon, phonology, morphology and syntax of the new Austronesian languages.…”